I was sharing a ride from the airport with someone who had just come back from Japan. I asked her what she did for work and she said she was doing Japanese to English translation.

It was the middle of the night and I could feel my bed rocking back and forth. I tried to sleep through it but I started hearing sirens blaring from the streets below. Not long after the fire alarm in my house started ringing as well. There was a weird wavy distortion on all of the alerts. I sat up and looked out at the night view of the city. The earthquake wasn’t stopping. I thought about my parents who were far away on another continent.

I hadn’t packed up in advance so I was still getting my things together on the morning of our departure. I tried to stuff a door along with the coats that were still hanging on the back into my bag without much success. The day was cloudy yet very bright as the light shone through the windows. The house kind of resembled my uncle’s place from childhood.

A friend was humming Seasons of Love and someone asked what the song was. “Don’t you remember?” he replied as he pulled up Google Images on his phone. There were photos us from our elementary school days floating on the web. Everyone was wearing black shirts while hanging from the outer edge of an apartment building. We tapped on one of the thumbnails which brought us to a Reddit post with a video of one of our friends beatboxing in the park.